Dispatches from the frontier

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Gotta love that Google Image search!It’s already been blogged to death, digg’d, Farked, and emailed countless times in the last few days, but I don’t think you can look too often at a screenshot or video of a “news” reader blabbering about Krispy Kreme’s new, “healthy” wheat donut with an image over her left shoulder that suggests the donuts are “so good, you’ll suck dick”.So far I love the new iMac. Never thought I would speak (or type) those words. I especially love the fact that it has a remote control, so that I can change the song that’s playing while I’m wandering around cleaning up my disaster of an apartment. I still haven’t quite figured out how I’m going to sync music to my phone or scrub the DRM fromliberate my future iTMS purchases so that I can copy them to my non-m4a-playing phone mini mainframe.
I read earlier this week that four-time winner Doug Swingley scratched from the Iditarod because he may have suffered broken ribs and a dislocated thumb. I’m surprised that: a) they’re still running this race, and b) that anyone would consent to run the race that many times. Is it too cold for PETA to protest naked outside the race site?
And now we touch upon the fact (pun absolutely intended) that Hilary Swank is on the cover of the new Esquire. The chest-thumping troglodyte in me is appreciative of the fact that the cover of and corresponding story inside the magazine feature Ms. Swank in a few different form-fitting, low-cut, and otherwise salacious outfits. The slightly more enlightened side of my persona is bothered by the fact that the cover blurb reads, “Two Oscars, an Agile Mind, A Body Like This….Thank You, Lord, Hilary Swank is Single Again”. The author of the article grudgingly acknowledges the fact that Hilary won her Oscars the Charlize Theron hard way – by not being beautiful or glamorous, but by uglying herself up and taking the gritty roles. The article begins with the phrase, “Like a streetwalker with a broken toe”, describing the act of Hilary walking across the floor of the photography studio wearing five-inch gold leather pumps (which aren’t visible in any of the pictures used in conjunction with the article). Obviously, Ms. Swank consented to be photographed, and to have the article written about her, but dontcha think a two-time Best Actress Oscar winner deserves slightly better treatment than this?
You gotta take the bad with the good. This issue of Esquire also features their annual Esky Music Awards. Notable among the awards are:
  • Best Live Band award given to My Morning Jacket, to accompany the Best Songwriter award given to band member Jim James last year
  • Best Songbird award presented to KT Tunstall, the genre-bending Scottish singer/songwriter
  • The Hold Steady‘s Craig Finn as Best Songwriter

Another feature of the Esky Awards is a so-called “Milf Memo” from actress Mary-Louise Parker entitled “Why Are Singers Such Pussies?”. In it, she decries the death of rowdiness in rock and roll, and laments that twelve years hence more singers will have the airbrushed vocal quality of James Blunt.

Checked out a show last night by local band Jeter. Despite less than optimal acoustics at Bistro Europa, the band played a spirited set opening for the Strohs. The tunes on their MySpace page can’t adequately describe the densely layered instrumentation and rich musical influences that comprise their live sound. I heard AM-era Wilco, the more uptempo stylings of Alejandro Escovedo, and a whole lotta Southern fried rock a la the Allman Brothers or Kings of Leon. Here’s hoping they’ll play a few more live gigs in the near future.

Not to gloat, but I have first row tickets to the Shins show on Monday!

Do you realize?And to wrap up the party, this week’s HoTW is the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne for his essay on NPR’s This I Believe. In his essay (which is much better listened to than read), he says that happiness is “not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance”. He also writes, “I believe normal life is extraordinary”. I couldn’t agree with him more.

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  • http://www.lastsecondthoughts.com Jeffro

    Awesome on The Shins! We need an update on the show!

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